Law Commons^™

Disparities In Health Care: The Pandemic’S Lessons For Health Lawyers, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, Nicole Huberfeld, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

Population-level disparities in health and health care came to the forefront of U.S. public consciousness in 2020. As the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic stratification of COVID-19 infection and death rates emerged with chilling clarity, the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer focused millions of Americans on the complex, structural nature of inequity and its long-lasting effects.

Access to quality health care is a “social determinant of health,” meaning that it is one of the “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes . . . the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set …

Knowledge Of Practicing Physicians About Their Legal Obligations When Caring For Patients With Disability, Nicole Agaronnik, Elizabeth Pendo, Julie Ressalam, Eric G. Campbell, Lisa Iezzoni

All Faculty Scholarship

doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05060 HEALTH AFFAIRS 38, NO. 4 (2019): 545–553

Shifting Public Health Priorities And The Global Effort To Prevent A Bird Flu Pandemic, Robert Gatter

All Faculty Scholarship

Global strategy to control highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has changed dramatically since 2003 when it was first reported that a confirmed bird flu jumped the species barrier to infect a human in Hong Kong. Evidence of this shift in priorities in the global fight against HPAI can be found most clearly in program funding trends. In late 2008 and into 2009, financial commitments from international donors for all HPAI programs dropped significantly. Meanwhile, within HPAI programs, funding shifted substantially away from animal biosecurity projects and into human response and preparedness work. This Article examines three reasons for this shift …

The Health Care Choice Act: The Individual Insurance Market And The Politics Of 'Choice', Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, employer-sponsored group insurance plans have been the backbone of health insurance coverage in the United States. While it is still true that most Americans get their health insurance through their employment, the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance has increased the ranks of the uninsured and pushed more workers, retirees and their families into the individual insurance market. In 2005, for example, nine percent of the population, or nearly 27 million people, turned to individual policies for health insurance coverage.

The Health Care Choice Act of 2005 (the "Act") currently before Congress aims to reform perceived problems in the individual …

Ending The Exploitation Of The Vulnerable: The Promise Of The Intersection Of American Bioethics, Human Rights, And Health Law, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, American bioethics has served as a safety net for the rich and powerful, for they are not forced to act as research subjects to obtain access to general health care for themselves or their children. However, American bioethics has failed to protect the vulnerable, i.e. indigent minorities. The vulnerable are not treated the same as the rich. They do not have access to health care. They are exploited in clinical trials that promise monetary gain or access to health care and their autonomy rights are often ignored. Some of the vulnerable most affected by these disparities are African-Americans. African-Americans …

Telling Stories About Health Insurance: Using New Films In The Classroom, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

In keeping with the Symposium theme, "The Mass Media's Influence on Health Law and Policy," this essay is designed to share my experience using clips from three recent popular films as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of legal and policy issues surrounding the private health insurance system, and to provide some practical advice for others interested in doing the same. Specific topics include the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance, continuation of private coverage under COBRA and HIPAA, public health care programs, physician incentives, the uninsured and access to care and legal remedies for claim denial. This essay builds …

Competitive Reform In Health Care: The Vulnerable Revolution, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, written at the dawn of the era of "competitive reform" in health care examines the case and prospects for the introduction of competition in health care delivery and financing. It observes the failures of the ancienne regime of fee for service payment and professional sovereignty and discusses the benefits of market-oriented policy. Its contribution, still salient today, is the lesson that competition cannot succeed without regulation. It identifies legislative, professional, and cultural hurdles to effective implementation of competitive norms and policies that have impeded the success of competition policy in health care.